


intercept message

by bawling



Category: IT (2017), IT - Stephen King
Genre: M/M, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-04
Updated: 2018-06-04
Packaged: 2019-05-17 23:37:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,909
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14841389
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bawling/pseuds/bawling
Summary: We're sorry. You have reached a number that has been disconnected or is no longer in service. If you feel you have reached this recording in error, please check the number and try your call again.





	intercept message

**Author's Note:**

> this is a story about a girl named lucky

**North of Montana, Santa Monica, Los Angeles**

**May 2, 2014**

It was 6:47 when Richie’s phone started ringing on his bedside table.

He’d made sure to turn off his 6:50 alarm the night before after he’d arrived at Exchange for a Capitol Records event. He’d known within the first five minutes of the party that he would be hungover the next morning, which he was, but no dice. Someone was always on his dick these days.

This morning it was Steve Covall, his manager.

Richie’s hand groped blindly towards his phone, knocking his six-hundred-dollar Bang and Olufsen wireless speaker and several credit cards to the floor in the process. He closed his fingers around the smooth, vibrating edges and raised his head slightly from where he was facedown in his pillow. He read the name flashing across the screen. A sudden wave of nausea hit him like the Great fucking Wall of China.

He answered anyways.

“The fuck do you want, Steve.”

“Morning Rich!” Steve’s voice was bright in a way that told Richie he’d just done a line or two. “Ready to hit the studio at eight, big guy? Don’t forget, you’re covering the new—”

Richie pulled the phone away from his ear and scrubbed across his swollen eyes with his free palm. Steve’s voice continued in a steady stream, muffled by the tinny phone speakers.

“Yeah, yeah, I got it, Steve. You’re forwarding her contact info? Good, great. Yeah, I’ll start streaming as soon as she’s on the line. Right.”

He hung up without waiting to see if Steve was finished. He was bound to text him regardless, and Richie’s head was starting to throb with the force of the entire bottle of Cristal he’d downed last night. Christ, he needed a fucking cigarette.

He lifted himself onto his forearms and rejected another surge of bile creeping up his esophagus. He twisted himself upright, planted his feet on the hardwood floor, and slipped on his glasses. He fished a pack of cigarettes out of the nightstand and scanned the sundrenched bedroom for his jeans. They were in a heap by the door.

He slowly made his way over to the pile of discarded clothes, unlit cigarette hanging between his lips. He bent down to dig the Zippo out of one of his back pockets when he noticed them. A pair of Manolos and a black silk slip, just to the left of his bare feet.

“ _Shit_. Fuck.”

He turned on his heels and met a pair of apathetic brown eyes staring back at him. Black makeup had turned into racoonish rings underneath, smeared thinly over the sallow skin of someone who clearly did not consume more than five-hundred calories a day.

“Knew you’d notice me eventually.” Her voice was rough. It took Richie a few solid seconds to process that it was coming out of her frail body. “Who’s Andy? Your dead wife?”

“What?”

"You just seem like one of those guys who’s got a dead wife or some other trauma that makes you incredibly attractive but a heartless dick.” She stretched lazily and the sheets slipped down to her waist. Richie could see every bone in her ribcage. “Do you mind?”

She pointed to the pile of her clothes next to him. He stared at her in shock for another second or two. Not a single one of his one night stands had stayed over in—he couldn’t even _remember_ how long. It was mildly unsettling.

He scooped up her things and handed them to her without saying anything. He’d learned early on in his career of sleeping around that he was not great with morning afters. Which is why he’d nixed them from the routine. Mostly. He watched her disappear into the ensuite bathroom and turned to pull a clean pair of boxer briefs out of his walk-in.

Her voice echoed into the bedroom while he was hiking last night’s jeans up his thighs.

“The sex was good, not that I can really remember it, but the screaming? You should really tone it down. A girl could go deaf in her sleep."

He was caught so off guard by the comment that he swerved and almost tripped over his pant legs.

“What the fuck are you _talking_ about?”

“ _You_. Screaming and crying in your sleep. It had me up half the night. Andy this, Andy that. Or, I don’t know, maybe it was Amy? Erin?”

Richie shoved some dirty clothes off the Eames chair he kept in the corner of his room and fell into it. His head felt like it was going to explode.

She reappeared in the doorframe, black silk hanging haphazardly over her bony shoulders. She was pretty, but in that deeply Los Angeles way that simultaneously made him want to heave. She pulled a business card out of her black Chanel clutch as she crossed the room and handed it to him.

“This is the number to my life coach. Something tells me you need her more than I do, babe.”

She leaned down and kissed his cheek. Her soft blonde hair brushed along his collarbone and her ashy breath mixed with his in the close space between them. Richie watched her leave, her stilettos silent in the way only someone who’d had their share of practice could be silent.

She closed the bedroom door behind her without looking back.

He sat there for a few minutes, turning her words over in his low functioning frontal lobe. He didn’t even know any Andys. Or Amys or Erins. No, scratch that. There was definitely an Amy or two, neither of which were remotely worth dreaming about.

He still had the cigarette hanging between his lips and the Zippo in his hand. He flicked it in a steady, longer than necessary loop until he was forced to accept that it was dead. His head hit the back of the chair and he sighed. Fucking perfect.

He dragged himself to his feet and tossed the pack and lighter back into his nightstand on his way into the bathroom.

He turned on the shower before turning to look at himself in the mirror. _What the fuck?_ He leaned in so he could see his face up close. Unsurprisingly, he looked like shit. His liver was currently filtering through the fishbowl’s worth of liquor he’d downed seven hours ago. But his eyes were red and puffy, the white around his irises pink and sore. And on the skin underneath, over the freckles on his cheekbones, he could see tear tracks in faint lines.

He tried to remember the last time he’d actually cried. Not since his mom’s funeral, probably. And that had been eight years ago.

He threaded his fingers through the tangled black curls that were stuck to his forehead and rubbed his palms firmly over his face, trying not to imagine the embarrassing alcohol-induced dream he’d managed to have in front of a stranger who was probably the niece of some CEO he’d never heard of.

He opened one of the top drawers. It was filled to the brim with prescription meds of every persuasion. As it turned out, being even mildly famous in LA could get you enough Ambien to knock yourself out for a year. He wriggled a mostly-empty bottle of Xanax from the bottom and let one of the rectangular pills tumble into his cupped palm.

“Get yourself the fuck together, Tozier.”

He popped the pill in his mouth and swallowed dry. He stripped out of his jeans and briefs and set his glasses on the counter. He let the stream of scalding water fall over his face, washing away whatever repressed psychosis was attempting to make an appearance.

Rich Tozier did not _do_ midlife crisis breakdowns and he wasn’t about to start, Andys, Amys and Erins be damned.

*

**May 7, 2014**

“Well fuck, I think that’s everything—wait, _shit_ , I almost forgot. This Friday I’ll have Swans and Sharon Van Etten on to talk about their records that are out next week on Young God and Jagjaguwar, so be sure to check it out on iTunes or any other fucking place podcasts live. Over and out, amigos.”

Richie stopped the recording and pulled off his headphones. He leaned back from the microphone into the plush leather of his chair, exhaling slowly and running a hand roughly through his coarse curls.

The early afternoon sunlight was starting to reflect off the surface of his desk into his eyes. He squinted through the window down at the steadily rippling Pacific. A couple of kids were down on Sorrento Beach, horsing around on their surfboards, not really riding them. There wasn’t much surf to ride.

He lived at the 757 on Ocean Avenue, just across from Palisades Park—third floor, with a southwest ocean view. He'd only been living there about four years. He’d saved up enough to invest in some Southern California real estate by his thirtieth, but it took four more years to find the right place.

This was the room that sold him on it. That and the huge bay windows that ran the length of his bedroom. He figured that if he was going to move out of Hollywood, he wasn’t going to do it half-assed. He needed an in-house studio space. And as soon as he’d seen the second bedroom, he’d known this was it.

It was small, even for a guest room, and the soundproof boards lining the walls didn’t help. Other than his recording setup, there wasn’t much he kept in here. Just a framed black and white photograph of Big Sur he’d gotten on vacation with one of his college girlfriends. Clutter made it hard to concentrate.

He'd never really imagined himself as the comfortable, mid-thirties, living in Santa Monica type. It wasn't the Oceanaire, but it was home.

He lowered the blinds a little and looked back to the stack of CDs piled up next to his monitor. There was a neon sticky note attached to the top case that read _not shitty. review by 5/16_. Another far larger stack on the other side of the desk was labeled _shitty_. A handwritten list was sticking out from under his keyboard with things like _email carol at interscope. billy joel 5/17_.

He pulled his phone out of his back pocket to text Steve.

_did you get the press pass for billy joel?_

_yeah. its all access. thank god for THR_

Richie snorted. He’d written a review of the Legacy Edition of _The Stranger_ for The Hollywood Reporter back in 2008. He rarely wrote any kind of formal album review, hadn’t done one in years. He’d never thought of himself as a writer. But that didn’t stop the Reporter from inviting him back to cover the first of Joel’s three-night residency at the Hollywood Bowl.

Whoop-de-fucking-do.

He pried open the sticky top desk drawer to look for his old copy of the Reporter. He’d had this desk since his second semester at UCLA. It had become the designated dumping ground for anything job-related that was worth keeping, and hadn’t been cleaned out for seventeen years, give or take. The lacquer was almost entirely peeled off and its wooden surface was covered in nicks and water rings, but he was sort of attached to it.

He rifled through a lot of old CDs and business cards from A&R reps and candy wrappers. He leaned down to try and see to the back of the drawer. _Bingo_. He reached in up to his elbow and hooked his fingers around a stack of magazines and newspapers at the back. He successfully jiggled them out and plunked them onto the desk with a soft thud.

Richie saw something fluttering in his peripheral vision. A thin slip of paper was on its way to the floor, kicked up by the upheaval at the back of the drawer. It landed just next to his shoe. He leaned down, pinched it, and turned it over in his palm.

_212 845 3785_

That’s all there was. A phone number. Jesus, when was the last time he’d taken down a number by hand? But the handwriting wasn’t his own chicken scratch. The numbers were penned with clean, careful lines. He ran his thumb over the faded ink, trying to smooth out the hundreds of lines and crinkles that betrayed its age.

Richie recognized the area code. It was one he knew he saw a lot for work, but he couldn’t quite place it. He opened a new browser tab and punched it into the search bar.

_Manhattan, New York City, New York_

He grabbed his phone and searched for the number in his contacts. Nothing. He racked his brain trying to think who he knew in New York that wouldn’t be in his phone. Maybe an old roommate? Lab partner? Fuck buddy?

He ran his fingers over the numbers again. There was something familiar about the handwriting. The longer he looked at it, the more he felt his train of thought going in and out like a bad Wi-Fi connection, like he was losing track of what he was seeing even when it was right in front of him. It felt like trying to think of a specific word for something. It was _right_ on the tip of his tongue, but there wasn’t enough shape to get his mouth around it.

Richie _hated_ that feeling.

He punched the number into his phone and hit the call button.

_We're sorry. You have reached a number that has been disconnected or is no longer in service. If you feel you have reached this recording in error, please check the number and try your call again._

He pulled the phone back from his ear and hung up. He looked back at the slip of paper resting in his hand, then closed his fist around it. He leaned to toss it in the wastebasket beside his desk.

But just before he let it fall, he felt that goddamn curiosity blow through him again. _Fuck it_. He pulled his arm back and slipped it into the front pocket of his jeans.

*

**May 12, 2014**

It was 10:17 on a Monday night and Rich Tozier was thinking about dick.

There was cool ocean air drifting in through the open bay window above his bed. He was lying on his stomach with his MacBook open in front of him, attempting to catch up on some emails from label reps. In actuality, he was draining a bottle of scotch, staring blankly at his inbox, and trying to ignore the intense ache emanating from his asshole.

It hurt like a motherfucker. He hadn’t sat on someone’s cock in, what, nine? Ten years? He’d sort of forgotten about this part. Or maybe he just hadn’t cared to take it easy because it felt so _goddamn_ good. Maybe both.

He didn’t remember when he’d started fucking men. It was just one of those things he always knew he liked. He’d done more than his fair share of sleeping around in college, and back then it didn’t matter what he was getting. Dick, pussy, ass. You name it, he wanted it. And he’d gotten plenty.

The older he got, the more he’d leaned towards the fairer sex, until he couldn’t even remember the last time he’d slept with another guy. Call it heteronormativity, fear of being emasculated in the media, whatever. It wasn’t any of that, right hand to Jesus. It was just _easier_. Availability-wise, sure, but it was more than that. It was just easier not to care. Easier to be alone after.

He had absolutely no way of proving it but he was _sure_ it was the dreams that were making him, you know. Want to suck dick.

The funny thing was he still couldn’t remember them at all. He’d started waking himself up with the screaming, his pillow soaked in a salty solution of tears and sweat. Not every night, but often enough that he’d considered calling the shrink he’d seen a few times after his little stint in rehab.

He couldn’t come up with a single logical explanation for how night terrors had reverted him to his 20-year-old libido in the span of ten days. Then again, there wasn’t a logical explanation for anything lately. All he knew was that his body felt like a kid begging his mother for phallic-shaped candy. If only Grindr had been around in ’96.

The intercom at his front door buzzed.

It was so unexpected that Richie jerked violently and a lick of scotch sloshed onto his Egyptian cotton sheets. He set his sticky glass on the nightstand and pushed himself to his knees with a groan. His legs wobbled on his way to the main room. One-part sore ass, one-part too much liquor.

He flipped on the industrial lights that hung from the exposed roof beams above the kitchen island. Soft light glinted off their glass bowls and cast the rest of the room in a heavy shadow.

He answered the intercom.

“Yeah?”

“Rich, it’s Steve.”

“What the hell are you doing here?”

“Hello to you, too. Buzz me in, we need to talk.”

Steve was, without a doubt, the last person on the planet Richie wanted to see right now. He also knew he’d never hear the end of it if he left him on the corner of Ocean and Montana at 10:30 at night, so he buzzed him in anyways. He shuffled over to the island and pulled a fresh bottle of scotch from the built-in liquor shelf. He was pouring some in a clean glass when Steve rapped on the door.

“It’s unlocked.”

He watched as Steve let himself in. He was wearing impeccably tailored black slacks and a crisp, white collared shirt with the top button undone and the sleeves rolled up to the elbow. It was an outfit that said two things: _I don’t take myself too seriously_ and _I’m too important not to wear business attire_. He turned and observed Richie in his black sweatpants and UCLA hoodie, no doubt looking exactly how he felt—drunk, fucked out, and pissed off.

Steve eyed the bottle of scotch on the island and waved a hand towards it.

“You gonna be a good host and offer me some?”

“You could’ve called.”

Richie overfilled a second glass and offered it to Steve as he padded slowly past him towards the leather sofa on the other side of the main room. He winced as his ass hit the couch. Steve’s eyebrows shot up. He gave Richie a conspicuous onceover.

“Rough night?”

“Not for him.” Steve grimaced. Repressed bastard. “What’s up, Sleaze.”

“Don’t give me shit. I have news that’s gonna make you wanna suck me off.”

Richie choked on his gulp of scotch. He dragged the sleeve of his hoodie across his lips and pushed his glasses up where they were slipping down the bridge of his nose.

“Presumptuous of you, but I’m listening.”

Steve leaned against the blue siding of the island and swirled the scotch in his glass. He was doing that thing Richie hated, delaying whatever news he had to make it seem more important than it usually was. That shit only worked on amateurs, but Steve was so deep in character that Richie doubted he could turn it off anymore.

“I just got off the phone with Spotify.” Richie nearly choked on his scotch again. Whatever he’d been expecting, it was a light-year and a _half_ off the mark. “They officially want to produce a webseries of your show.”

“You’re _shitting_ me. Are you—are you fucking serious?” He was so shocked he couldn’t even bother to be annoyed by the smug look on Steve’s assface. “When the hell did this happen? I—Wasn’t it just an email inquiry like, what, a month ago?”

“I’ve had a few calls with their Stockholm office. I didn’t realize how serious they were until I got them on the phone. They’re _obsessed_ with your show, Rich. They love that you’re one of the guys on the ground floor of independent internet radio, you know. All that entrepreneurial bullshit.”

“Sure, whatever, I don’t give a shit. What’s the offer?”

“They want to start with a nine-episode contract, five thousand per, all expenses covered. I know it’s a little lowball, but it’s still relatively experimental. Besides, the money is chump change compared to the press you’re getting. They’ll have you record a few ads, promote them on your show, the usual.”

“Holy shit. Holy fucking _shit_.” Richie collapsed into the couch. His neurons were firing so fast it felt _just_ this side of mania. His own _TV show_. Webseries. Whatever the fuck. “Shit, when can I sign? What’s the production schedule? Are they subcontracting a crew in LA or—”

“Hang on, Rich. There’s a bit of a catch.” Steve paused again to down some of his scotch. Richie had never wanted to punch someone in the face this bad. “They’re only interested in working out of their New York office. You know how they are, fucking Scandinavian elitists.”

“No.”

_I can’t go back._

“Jesus, Rich. Don’t be a princess. You haven’t even thought about it.”

“I don’t _need_ to think about it. Unless it’s based out of LA, I’m not interested.”

Steve turned and put both hands on the island. He leaned his head between his arms and exhaled like a parent arguing with a petulant child. When he turned back, he was wearing what Richie recognized as his _authentic_ expression. His voice was laced with a rehearsed note of sincerity.

“Rich, you should take it. I’ve been telling you to get into TV for years. You’re funny, good looking. Women—” Richie winced again as he shifted on the couch. Steve cleared his throat loudly. “— _People_ would claw each other’s eyes out to get in bed with you. Not to mention you’re a great writer. Don’t think I haven’t read the shit you leave lying around your studio, it’s fucking genius. The total package.”

Richie didn’t bother asking what kind of cut Steve was getting out of it. His speech was dangerously close to heartwarming, which meant at _least_ five figures.

“So you’re saying I should leave LA? Just like that?” He knew he was being difficult, but fuck it. He was in show business now. “This is my _home_ , Steve. Everyone I know, everything I’ve worked for is _here_. You know that.”

“Christ, Rich, man up. Every talentless hack in this city with more than a thousand followers would kill for the chance to relocate to Manhattan.”

“And everyone in Manhattan dreams of making it in Hollywood.” Richie’s eyebrows and arms danced to match his sarcastic cadence. Some scotch sloshed onto his sweatpants. “Grass is always greener and all that shit.”

Steve’s narrowed eyes told Richie that he could tell something was off. Steve was a dumb son of a bitch, but he wasn’t stupid. You couldn’t afford to be stupid in this business. You just had to perfect the art of appearing stupid.

“Aren’t you _from_ New York?”

Richie ran his free hand through his hair and sighed. What the hell was it with West Coasterners and New England? They all had their heads so far up their own ass they couldn’t tell Bangor from Pyongyang.

“Maine.”

“Whatever, Maine. But seriously, don’t you think it’s poetic? It’s like, I don’t know.” Steve flailed an arm like he was trying to conjure the right energy. “ _Providence_ or some shit. Little Richie Tozier, returning home a _somebody_. Ready to conquer the city that never sl—”

“Don’t fucking call me that.” Richie drained the rest of his scotch, letting the flavor roll over his tongue before he swallowed. Steve was watching him closely, waiting for a reaction. Richie didn’t have one for him. “How long do I have to decide?”

“They want you there by Wednesday to meet with their marketing team.”

Steve’s eyes narrowed again. He opened his mouth to say something, but closed it. He set his empty glass on the island and turned back to the front door. For a second, Richie thought he was going to leave without another word. He was halfway out the door when he stopped and looked back over his shoulder.

“You have until eight tomorrow morning.”

And then he was gone. It was a dramatic exit, even for Steve.

Richie lolled his head back against the couch and closed his eyes. He felt his body melting slowly into the cushions. He imagined the gaps between them opening up to swallow him whole. Rich Tozier. Thirty-eight. Eaten alive by a god damned sofa.

For the first time in twenty years, Richie thought about his childhood.

New York was all mixed up with times his dad had taken him on surprise trips to Coney Island or Radio City. He remembered stealing the family Oldsmobile and driving all the way to Uniondale to see The Cure on tour. Christ, he couldn’t have been more than sixteen. They’d skipped a day of school, and there’d been _hell_ to pay when they rolled back into town on Sunday night, but it was so worth it.

Richie couldn’t remember who’d ridden next to him in the passenger seat.

He hadn’t been back to the city since Y2K (a hazy couple days at best). He hadn’t even been east of Chicago since 2006. That was the year his mother died. Liver failure. His parents moved to Baltimore just after he graduated high school. That’s where they buried her. Maine never felt much like home to them anyways.

For Richie, home was a hollow feeling.

It took several attempts before he managed to push himself off the sofa and onto his feet. He caught a glimpse of the inky black stretch of ocean through his window, moving like molasses in the dark. He didn’t even bother putting the dirty glasses in the sink. He just grabbed the bottle of scotch on his way back to the bedroom.

He went straight to his bathroom and dug through his prescription drawer until he found an OxyContin bottle with a couple pills left. He dumped them onto his palm and chased them down with more liquor.

He immediately regretted it. He observed himself in the mirror, looking himself square in the eye. He looked like he hadn’t slept in weeks. Maybe he hadn’t.

 _You don’t want to go down this road again, you dumb son of a bitch_.

He crawled back into bed, laptop abandoned on the opposite side of the mattress. His asshole was still sore but the Oxy was already doing wonders. He felt himself starting to get hard again. He slid his hands down from his chest to the waistband of his sweats. His dipped his fingers underneath and rubbed over his hip bone. He could feel bruises blossoming in the places where strong hands had held him down.

The anger hit him out of nowhere.

One second he was getting the best news of his career, and the next he was no different than he’d been at sixteen. Horny and medicated. It was like there was some mile wide ravine disconnecting the two landmasses inside him. He was trying move forward, but he was constantly forced to go back and look for something he wasn’t sure was even there. There was something missing, something _wrong_ , but he had no fucking clue why.

He swallowed the feeling down and forced himself to focus on the issue at hand.

He ran through a mental list of the contacts he had in the city. He rolled over to the edge of the mattress and plucked his jeans off the floor. He pulled his phone out of the back pocket and started scrolling through his address book. _Parker Kim_. Yeah, he was the press manager for the Bowery. He tapped Parker’s name to check for a current email address, but his brain hit a snag when he saw the area code.

_212_

He felt a little tickle of something in the back of his mind. He reached for his jeans again, digging in both front pockets until he felt it—the little piece of paper he’d found in his desk last week.

There was that _feeling_ again. It came rushing back as soon as he got another look at the numbers. And maybe it was because he was expecting it, but it didn’t feel as cloudy as it had last time. There was slightly more shape to the feeling this time. And where he had just been so aware that there was nothing, there was _something_.

He hadn’t felt that kind of something since—well, a long fucking time ago.

He wanted to call again. He knew it was stupid, that the number was disconnected, but he still wanted to. So he did.

_We're sorry. You have reached a number that has been disconnected or is no longer in service. If you feel you have reached this recording in error, please check the number and try your call again._

He didn't like it but he was thinking about something Steve had said earlier. _Providence or some shit._ Except it wasn’t the kind of providence he was talking about.

Fuck it.

Richie picked his phone back up and sent two messages. The first was to Steve:

_i’m in_

The second was to Grindr user benedickarnold:

_i know it’s only been 3 hours but wanna come over_

*

**Union Square, Manhattan, New York City**

**May 28, 2014**

It was almost 7:45 by the time Richie got back to the W Hotel.

Preproduction days were unbearably long. Meetings, meetings, and more meetings. In the two weeks since he’d arrived in New York, he’d seen little else than the half a mile of 18th Street between Union Square and Spotify’s new office in the Flatiron District.

May in New York City was, admittedly, better than he remembered. The days were mildly warm and light (not sticky and thick like they felt in the summer months), but his route to and from the office was nothing but a monotonous string of corner stores and scaffolding, indiscernible from a hundred other streets. To his eye, at least. When it came down to it, New York was just a lot of concrete and asphalt and metal and bodies.

Richie figured that was part of the reason New Yorkers were so fucking serious all the time. The external was so tedious that an internal intensity and focus was easy to fall into. Aggressive determination was everywhere, and it was fucking exhausting. LA had its downsides of course, but it was continually humming with vitality and distractions.

Not unlike himself, coincidentally.

The hotel lobby was already bustling when he stepped in off of Park Avenue South. Clumps of business men and NYU students in cocktail attire crowded around the entrance and lounged on expensive mid-century furniture under delicate industrial lighting, waiting for available tables at the bar. Richie slid through the crowd, ducking out of the way of oncoming foot traffic as he hopped up the steps and past the the front desk.

He didn’t register the sound of his own name being called until he was reaching for the up button at the nearest elevator.

“Mister—Mister Tozier?”

Richie looked over his shoulder and saw one of the familiar receptionists waving at him from behind the wood paneling of the desk. He raised his eyebrows at her and weaved his way through a stream of guests on their way up to their rooms. He reached the desk and ran an absent hand through his windblown curls.

“Hey, sorry about that. Long day.”

“Oh, it’s—it’s fine.” Richie watched red spots bloom on the high points of her cheekbones. He smiled. “Sorry for yelling. It’s loud in here and I didn’t want to miss you.”

She was pretty. She tucked a lock of her sandy, shoulder length hair behind an ear.

“So,” Richie drummed his fingers on the surface of the desk. “Was there something up?”

“Oh! Yeah. Here,” She leaned to her right and tore a sheet of W Hotel branded paper off the top of a notepad. “You’ve gotten a few calls while you were out, all from a Mister Mike Hanlon.”

He didn’t recognize the name. Maybe it was a local call from LA? He accepted the slip of paper from the tips of her fingers. There was no phone number, just a short message:

_Mike Hanlon. Got hotel number from Steve Covall. Urgent that we speak. Will call back._

“Did he say where he was calling from?”

“No, sir.”

“And he didn’t leave a return number?”

“No. I tried asking for one, but he insisted on just calling back later. I’ll go ahead and forward his next call to your suite.”

“Yeah, sure. That works.” Richie nodded slowly. He folded the paper in half and slipped it into the pocket of his bomber jacket. “Thanks, doll.”

“No problem.” She gave him a curious look. The crisp professionalism in her voice melted away. “You look like you could use a drink.”

Richie laughed, _really_ laughed, for the first time since he’d arrived in the city. God, it felt good.

“I could use a lot more than that.” Fuck. He hadn’t meant to say that. His eyes followed her tongue as it traced over her top lip. He cleared his throat and took a step back towards the elevators. “Don’t work too hard.”

He managed to make it inside one of the empty elevators before he heard her calling for him again. He stuck a foot in front of the door and poked his head back out. They almost bumped into each other.

“What’s up?”

“I’m meeting some friends at TAO later,” She was looking up at him through thickly mascaraed lashes. There was something comfortable in the honey-brown of her eyes. She lowered her voice even though there was no one close enough to hear her. “I could get you that drink. I’m sure you’ll find someone to get you the rest.”

Richie made a sincere effort not to be charmed, but it was useless. He really was so fucking easy.

“I get off at ten.”

She stepped back and the elevator door swallowed her from view.

By the time he was back in his suite, Richie had already forgotten the name Mike Hanlon.

He grabbed one of the shot-sized bottles of Jameson from the minibar as he walked through the door and into the living area. The lights were off, and the curtains on the windows were drawn. Richie could see little squares of light scattered along the apartment building across the street, like filled in spaces on a piece of graph paper.

He stripped out of his jacket and tossed it onto the loveseat in the far corner of the room. A little hallway connected the living space to the bedroom, with the bathroom branching off in between. The bedroom was mostly taken up by a plush king-sized bed. There were two large windows, one above the bed on the right, and one facing southwest towards Union Square Park. It wasn’t nearly as nice as waking up to his ocean view at home, but there was plenty of natural light.

Richie toed off his Docs at the foot of the bed. He knocked back the Jameson and tossed it in the empty wastebasket next to the nightstand. He flopped face-up onto the bed. He hadn’t realized how tired he was until his head hit the mattress. He felt it all the way down to his bones. _Jesus_ , he was getting old.

He strained his neck back around to see the LED screen of the alarm clock. 8:06. He figured there wasn’t any harm in getting a couple hours of sleep in before he went out with—well, shit. He hadn’t even asked her name.

He let his eyes fall closed and let out a long breath. He already felt close to sleep, teetering just on the edge. He was thinking about sandy-brown hair, not shoulder length, but cropped. Warm, honey-brown eyes looking up at him, eyelashes clean and long. Constellations of freckles brushed over a slightly sunburned nose.

The phone rang.

Richie jumped and sat up, then fell back onto the bed with a groan. _That’s right, the damn phone call_. He’d left the note in his pocket in the next room like a fucking dolt. He briefly considered just burying his face in a pillow and ignoring it, but he knew they’d just keep calling until he answered which negated any possibility of a nap. He rolled over and stretched out his arm to grab the cordless phone off its dock on the nightstand.

“Hello?”

“Hello—Am I speaking with Rich Tozier?”

It was a peculiarly formal way to start a conversation. Richie thought the voice on the other end sounded off somehow. Cautious.

“Yeah. Yes, this is Rich Tozier.”

“Rich, it’s Mike Hanlon.” Richie frowned. That name again. He parted his lips to say he was afraid he didn’t know a Mike Hanlon, but the words ruptured in his throat. “Mike Hanlon from Derry.”

The first thing he remembered was Beverly Marsh’s red hair. The sound of their mingled laughter, close enough that their noses touched, laying together in Richie’s twin bed.

 _Bev_.

“Mike?” His voice was barely a whisper. “Shit, is it—is it really you?”

“It’s me, Rich. God, it’s good to hear your voice.” He could hear Mike’s smile through the phone. He _remembered_ Mike’s smile. He felt his chest start to close in on his lungs. “Do you know why I’m calling?”

The cautious note in his voice was back. Richie could feel his heart racing in every pulse point. He closed his eyes and felt the dam in his memory crack and buckle. He tried to stem the flow of it, but it was already starting to fill up all the empty crevasses of his mind.

He forced himself to swallow down the panic that was welling up.

“Mike, what’s happening?”

Richie knew the answer to his own question as soon as the words left his mouth.

“It’s started again.”

It was all coming back to him.

Stan Uris with his bully-magnet kippah and a row of delicate scars lining his jaw. Bill Denbrough who could barely get through his own name with stuttering so badly that it drove you almost dogshit. Beverly Marsh and her babydoll dresses, smoking her stolen cigarettes from the Center Street Drug Store in the bathroom on lunch break. Ben Hanscom—fat, friendless, buried up to his neck in library books.

Betty Ripsom’s soggy shoe in the wide mouth of the Barrens leading to the sewers. The missing poster in the house on Neibolt Street. Bill beside him, pounding on a locked door.

They were looking for someone.

“Are you sure?”

“I’m sure.”

“Jesus Christ.” It was impossible to understand how he’d gone from knowing nothing to everything in barely a second. Like it was just on mute, and Mike started the song over on full volume. “How long have you known?”

“I—For a while, I think. But I wouldn’t admit it until a couple weeks ago. I couldn’t.” Mike’s voice was somber, like he hated himself for what he was about to ask. Richie knew what was coming. He’d been dreading it since he was thirteen years old. “I waited as long as I could. Longer than I should’ve.”

“Yeah.” He couldn’t think of anything more to say. “Yeah.”

“How much do you remember, Rich?”

He didn’t know how to answer that. He remembered what he remembered—he remembered his friends, he remembered the summer of 1989. He remembered the smell of the ankle-deep water. Beverly floating.

“Enough, I guess.”

“Will you come?”

“Yeah. I’ll come.”

Richie was vaguely aware that he was doing exactly what he hated so much about people from Los Angeles. He was responding to everything Mike said with just the right timing, and it was exactly the same as Steve’s dramatic pause or his forced sincerity. It sounded great, but it was a lie.

He wondered how long it had been since he’d had a real, honest-to-god conversation with someone.

“Be here as soon as you can make it. Friday at the latest.”

“And the others?”

“They’ll be there. Eddie’s the only call I have left. See you soon, Rich.”

And then he hung up.

Shock was one of those things Richie knew about from TV. It was something people got after being in a car wreck or witnessing a murder. He’d never experienced shock first hand, because nothing particularly bad had ever happened to him. Or not that he could remember.

He’d been living in it for most of his life. All it took was Mike Hanlon’s voice to bring it rushing back. Maybe it was there all along and he’d just gotten numb to it, like when you move your foot after it’s been asleep and the pins and needles start.

That’s what he’d felt when Mike was on the phone—pins and needles. Except it wasn’t his foot that was waking up. It was his _mind_ , waking up to years of his own life that had been stripped away from him. To the unpleasant truth that monsters were real.

But _this_? This wasn’t shock. This was something else.

Even after the name was said aloud, he could barely—just barely—hold it in his own mind.

 _Eddie_.

Something was starting to take shape. Not a memory, not yet. It was that familiar, indecipherable feeling amplified tenfold, warm in the pit of his stomach. It was getting hotter and hotter, burning his organs from the inside out, trailing down his legs and pooling in the tips of his toes.

It was too much.

Before he knew what was happening he was throwing himself onto the bathroom floor, knees cracking against the tile, heaving up everything in his guts as his body was racked with the indescribable pain of remembering.

_Soft, strong hands rubbing Neosporin into the cuts on his knees and his cheeks. Stripped down to their shorts, clothes covered in hundreds of years of rotting flesh tossed into the corner of Bill’s upstairs bathroom._

_A bloody hand sliding against his own cut palm._

_The first clumsy press of their lips. His face wet with tears, Eddie’s eyes wide when he pulled back. His little gasp of hot breath over Richie’s lips when he pressed him into the mattress to kiss him again._

_The trip to New York. Eddie even let him hold his hand. Their skin sticking together in the backseat of the Oldsmobile at night._

_Standing in the driveway, Richie’s bags packed into the car. Exchanging slips of paper with assurances that they’d talk soon. The last time they’d heard each other’s voices in twenty years._

“Eddie.”

He ignored the hot bile coating his mouth and let the sound of it wash over him. The name he couldn’t remember. The one he never thought in a million years he’d ever forget.

“Eds.”

When the worst of the vomiting had stopped, Richie willed his paralyzed arms to move. He lifted his hands off the ground. They were shaking like a detoxing addict. He reached into his back pocket for his phone, and then his wallet. He pulled out the little slip of paper he’d tucked away for good luck.

_You can leave a message for me here. It’s the front desk at my dorm._

He knew that Eddie wasn’t on the other side but he didn’t care.

_We're sorry. You have reached a number that has been disconnected or is no longer in service. If you feel you have reached this recording in error, please check the number and try your call again._

*

**May 29, 2014**

It was already past 4:00 in the afternoon when Richie woke up.

His face was still plastered to the cold tile of the bathroom floor where he’d passed out not long after trying to call Eddie.

 _Eddie_.

He bolted upright and slapped a hand across his mouth. The nausea was already rushing back, threatening to take control of his body all over again. He pushed himself to his knees and gripped the porcelain counter to pull himself off the floor.

He stared blankly at himself in the mirror. He looked like hell. He _felt_ like hell. The taste of stale vomit covered the inside of his mouth and his eyes were bloodshot from crying.

He started the shower, as hot as it would go. He dragged off his clothes one article at a time and crawled in, wincing when the scalding water hit his skin. He sunk back along the wall of the shower and forced himself to withstand the temperature. It felt close to burning him alive, but it allowed him to zero his mind in on one constant stream of thought:

 _Columbia_.

Richie held the word in his frontal lobe, just that one word, until it stopped trying to slip away. Then he added on:

 _Eddie went to Columbia_.

His stomach lurched. His spine curled into itself as he retched once, twice, three times. He tried again:

_Eddie went to Columbia._

It took a few more rounds of retching and resting before it settled. Then he tired it out loud:

“Eddie went to Columbia.”

After a few minutes of chanting it out loud, the dizziness started to clear. He washed himself quickly, toweled off, and pulled on a fresh white t-shirt and a fresh pair of jeans from one of his still unpacked bags. He returned to the bathroom floor for his phone. He opened Safari and and typed into the search bar:

_eddie kaspbrak columbia_

The top result was something called Columbia Doctors. He tried again:

_edward kaspbrak columbia_

Nothing, just the same top result. He tried again:

_edward kaspbrak columbia 1998_

When the same page popped up as the top result for the third time, He clicked.

The page loaded. It was a staff page for the Columbia University Medical Center in Midtown. He scrolled through the list of names, organized into sections by department: Cardiology, hematology, oncology, pediatrics, urology.

He was on the last of three pages. He was sure it just a bad search result. He was frantic to keep looking, maybe he needed to try social media, but he convinced himself that he had to look until the very last name, just to be sure. He scrolled until he reached the final department, Women’s Health.

And there he was.

_Edward Kaspbrak, DNP, MSN_

There was a portrait just next to the name. The man in the picture was handsome. He wore simple wireframe glasses, a navy blue collarless dress shirt, and an emerald green cardigan. His sandy brown hair was short and practical, grown out slightly longer in the front and swept neatly to one side. Hundreds of tiny freckles swept along his sharp cheekbones and the delicate bridge of his nose. And his eyes— _God_ , his eyes. Richie was cold. He wanted to drown in the warmth of them.

He clicked on Eddie’s name.

_Edward Kaspbrak is a women’s health nurse practitioner and an assistant professor at Columbia University School of Nursing, where he received his BS, MS, and DNP degrees._

_Make an appointment with Edward at our Midtown Manhattan Primary Care Center,_ _51 West 51st Street, Suite 390, New York, NY 10019. Hours: Monday-Friday, 8:00-6:00._

Richie had never moved so fast in his entire life.

Within half a minute he was out the door, bomber jacket thrown over his threadbare t-shirt, Docs untied, phone in hand and the taste of his leather wallet stuck between his teeth. He ran down the emergency stairwell, through the W lobby, and all the way to Union Square Station.

He was going to find him.

*

It was just after 5:00 when Richie stepped off the elevator.

He stood still and tried to pull himself together. His chest was still heaving and his throat was raw from running two blocks up 7th Avenue and another one and a half down 51st.

His eyes wandered around the room. Everything was coated in muted hues of cream and beige. Even the marble tile was beige. Large canvases of expensive looking, colorful, inoffensive contemporary art were scattered along the walls. It was a room that expressed comfort without trying too hard to make you forget why you were there.

About thirty feet to his left, there was a receptionist sitting behind a dark wood paneled desk.

This was happening. He was walking up to a total stranger to ask them—Christ, he could barely even think about what was going to happen next. He couldn’t start. He’d go even crazier than he already was.

“Can I help you?”

She was older, maybe sixty. The delicate skin around her eyes was set with deep crow’s feet.

“I, uh. Yeah, I’m looking for someone.”

“Are you here for an appointment?”

“No, no. I’m trying to get in touch with—with, um.” Richie took a breath through his nose. _Be fucking normal_. “I’m looking for Eddie Kaspbrak?”

“Oh, sure. He’s one of our primary care physicians. Let me pull up his schedule, I’ll see how early I can get you b—”

“No, I’m not here to see him, I’m just—” Richie raked a shaking hand through his hair. “Which office is he in?”

“Well, usually he’s in room 382, but you just missed him.”

Something the size of a boulder hit the pit of Richie’s stomach.

“What? But I thought—” He checked the time on his phone. It was impossible that he’d misread it this many times. “He’s supposed to be here until six.”

“He had to step out of the office a little early today, family emergency. He’ll be out of the office for a week or so.”

She watched Richie’s face closely, the space between her eyebrows creasing and accentuating the lines of her wrinkles. She shuffled a little behind the desk and Richie heard the scratch of a pen. When she looked up, she held out a crisp white business card with the information for the medical center printed in raised black letters on the front.

“I’m not supposed to do this but,” She motioned for him to turn the card over. He flipped it with his fingers. There was a phone number written in loopy blue handwriting. “That’s his personal line. In case—well, just in case.”

Richie told himself to say something. Anything. When he looked up, she was watching him with that careful expression again. He parted his lips to thank her, but nothing came out.

He nodded. She nodded back.

*

Back outside on 51st, everything around him was white noise.

The electric sense of urgency was gone. It had vacated his body just as suddenly as it had come, and he felt it replaced with heaviness in every bone. Eddie was already gone. For all Richie knew, he was already in Derry, waiting for him to walk through the library doors.

He was still holding the business card with Eddie’s number written on it. He twirled it in his fingers a few times. It was funny, in a way. It was the wrong number that brought him all the way here without his even knowing it. And now the right one was just there, in the palm of his hand, but it already felt too late.

He’d be in Derry in less than twenty-four hours. Eddie would be there, too. They’d all be there, like they promised. But it wasn’t about them. It was about what happened to them. It was about that god forsaken pit of hell town that had tried to swallow them up one by one.

Maybe he was having some kind of premonition. Maybe he was just full of shit.

He’d wandered up the street while he was tripping over everything in his mind. He turned onto 6th Avenue and passed Radio City. He was just outside of NBC when he felt his phone vibrating in his back pocket.

It was Steve. God help him.

“Yeah.”

“Rich, it’s me. Is everything alright?”

“Hm?”

“I said is everything alright?”

“I—yeah, I’m fine.”

“Listen, I got a call from Blake Sorensen, he said you never showed up for meetings today. He said they were calling you all morning.”

“Oh, yeah. I overslept.”

“What, all fucking day?” Steve laughed around the words. When Richie didn’t play along, he went silent. “Christ, Rich. You’re scaring me. What’s going on? Is it—”

Richie knew what was coming before Steve worked up the nerve to say it.

“Do I need to make the call? Yes or no.”

“Steve, for fuck’s sake.”

“Yes or no, Rich.”

“ _No_.”

“Don’t bullshit me.”

“I’m fucking clean. Don’t _coddle_ me.”

“Then what the hell is wrong with you?”

A long difficult sigh escaped Richie’s lips before he answered.

“I have to leave New York. For a few days at least. Maybe a week or two. I’m not sure.”

There was a beat of silence. Richie had a feeling Steve was struggling to process the concept of taking a day off, let alone fourteen days.

“What do you mean _leave_? You’re on preproduction schedule for two more weeks.”

Richie chewed on his mouth. He had to choose his words carefully. He didn’t even know what was worth saying at this point, but he figured he owed Steve at least a _reason_.

“Someone called me. Someone I used to know a long time ago. Back then something happened. I made a promise. We—we all promised that we would go back if it started happening again. And I guess it has.”

“Rich, you can’t be serious. This is the opportunity of your career. You can’t just—it’s _everything_ you’ve worked for. Who knows what could come next? I mean, we’re talking major entertainment contracts—”

Richie let the phone fall away from his ear. He looked up at the building next to him. His eyes roamed over the neon lights of The Tonight Show marquee as Steve’s muffled yelling continued on from the phone speaker.

It was all so fucking empty. The entire idea of it. Nothing else mattered anymore.

“Steve.” He interrupted Steve’s stream of justifications and surprised him into shutting up. “Just stop. It’s never gonna happen. I don’t even _want_ it to.”

Steve laughed incredulously.

“Of course you do! Are you seriously trying to tell me that’s not what you wanted when you started all this? Is that not why you came to LA in the first place?”

“It was. When I was eighteen.” Richie sighed and rubbed at his temple. “Steve, I don’t fucking care anymore. I have everything I’m going to have. I don’t _want_ more. I’m not you.”

There was a long pause. Richie braced himself for the imminent tirade, but it never came.

“I’ve done everything for you.”

Richie laughed. Actually _laughed_.

“I never fucking _asked_ you to.”

The line went dead.

Richie returned his phone to his back pocket and walked on. He’d barely turned onto 49th before he felt it vibrating again. He didn’t need to look to know it was Steve. There was no point in answering, so he let it ring.

As he descended into the station below 49th, he felt himself lift a little. Some of that white hot determination in the pit of his stomach was back. He was _going_ to see Eddie, and he wasn’t going to let it be too late.

He couldn’t.

*

Union Square was strangely quiet for early evening.

Richie felt cool air whisk through his hair as he stepped out from the steps of Union Square Station. There was only a little sunlight left—most of it had already dipped below the skyline. The dogwood trees scattered around the grounds were clinging to their pink blossoms. Spring was coming to an end.

He walked up the mosaicked brick path towards Park Avenue South. It was a rare still moment in the middle of Manhattan. It was the first time he’d felt calm in weeks. It was something more than calm, though. It was—not peace of mind exactly. It was the hollowness beginning to close up, just a little. He had no way of knowing what was waiting for them in Derry. He didn’t even know for sure that Eddie remembered him, but it didn’t matter. Not yet, anyways.

In that moment, he remembered. And that was enough.

At the corner of Park and East 17th, Richie bounced on the balls of his feet, impatiently waiting to cross. Even from across the street, he could see through the W’s lobby windows that the hotel bar was in full swing. People were loitering in front of and around the turnstile entrance, identical in every way to the people he’d seen waiting for a table the night before.

Except one.

There was a man standing alone, hovering close to the turnstile, but not like he was waiting for service. It was more like he was debating on going inside at all. He was nervously looking from the door to the phone in his hand every few seconds.

Richie could tell from how close he was to a few of the Wall Street chumps that he was short—no more than five-seven. He wasn’t dressed like he was there for a drink. He was wearing simple charcoal slacks and brogues, and a neatly buttoned white dress shirt. Each sandy brown hair was perfectly in place. And there was an emerald green sweater draped over one of his forearms.

Richie felt adrenaline coursing through his veins.

_Eddie?_

It was almost as if he’d spoken the name aloud. The man turned suddenly towards him, mirroring him from the other side of the crosswalk. He looked up and caught Richie’s eye.

_Eds?_

His brows furrowed behind the thin frames of his glasses. He was staring at Richie with disbelief, and then caution, like he was angry at the very possibility that he wasn’t seeing what he thought he was seeing. His mouth fell slightly open. Richie could see it move, like he was talking to himself.

For a spilt second, Richie geared up to run across Park Avenue South right through 6:00 traffic. But _An Affair to Remember_ was a boring movie no matter what anyone said, and fuck if he was going to end up a depressed guy in a wheelchair.

Without breaking eye contact, he reached into his back pocket and wrapped his fingers around his phone and the business card. He held them up with shaking hands, and typed in the written-on number. He pressed the screen against his ear and listened to it ring, watching the man across the street without blinking.

He saw him look down at the phone in his hand, then back up at Richie. He touched his thumb to the screen. The call on Richie’s end connected. He could hear the loud rustle of city noise. The man looked up at him one more time before he lifted the phone to his ear.

They watched each other silently for a few seconds.

“Rich?”

The voice on the other end, so soft it was barely a voice at all, said his name. Richie smiled.

“Hey, Eds.”

**Author's Note:**

> if you made it to the end, you get a gold star. this stupid question mark of a story started when my friend tori would not shut up about how richie is lucky from lucky - britney spears. so if you're mad at me right now, it's tori's fault.
> 
> a lot of this is just me having fun with my very specific headcanons about modern adult richie. characterization is fun!
> 
> as always, thank you for reading my garbage. if you have questions or wanna chat, ask me at [@lesbianfinnwolfhard](http://lesbianfinnwolfhard.tumblr.com)


End file.
